The sordid secrets of London museum’s skeleton collection come to Glasgow
THEY are long-forgotten victims of plague, syphilis and murder. Now new scientific techniques to analyse skeletons can uncover everything from eye and hair colour to where the person spent their childhood. Examples from the Museum of London’s 20,000-strong collection of skeletons will go on display in Glasgow on Friday – the first time the exhibits are touring the UK – together with bones unearthed in Scotland.
While researchers have traditionally studied bones for visible signs of clues to disease, trauma and even the cause of death, developments in scientific techniques mean increasingly detailed information can be identified from remains which have been hidden beneath the ground for hundreds of years.
Jelena Bekvalac, curator of Human Osteology at the Museum of London, said looking for visible changes in bones’ structure or lesions which indicate disease or trauma, and combined with information about where a skeleton was found, helped provide insight into how the person once lived.
But she said advances in science – such as analysing DNA samples recovered from ancient specimens and chemical elements known as isotopes found in teeth – were helping provide far more detailed information.
“With ancient DNA analysis, a bone or tooth sample can give you information in terms of sex, eye colour, hair colour and also perhaps diseases such as tuberculosis that we wouldn’t be able to detect in the skeleton,” she said.
“Other work done by some colleagues which has really moved on is sampling of teeth to look at the stable isotopes – signatures within the teeth that indicate where people have come from – so you can look at mobility and where people might have been.”
Isotopes have particular signatures which vary across the country and analysis can reveal where the person spent their childhood.
She said researchers were also developing methods with the mineralised plaque which sits on teeth, known as calculus or more commonly tartar. “They can sample that and give an insight into diseases you may have been affected by, and also pick out potential pollutants or particles you may have been breathing in or ingesting, such as pollen,” she said.
The exhibition, Skeletons: Our Buried Bones, will display eight skeletons at Glasgow University’s Hunterian Art Gallery – four from the Museum of London’s collection and four excavated from sites in Scotland.
The examples include a medieval male, aged around 35-36 years old, who was found in a “Black Death” cemetery in East Smithfield, London. He was discovered to have an arrowhead lodged in his spine, but it is thought he died from the plague.
“Something like the Black Death kills you very quickly so, as osteologists, we couldn’t tell from a skeleton if that person had it as it won’t leave any marks on the bone,” Bekvalac said. “But samples were taken from a number of individuals that we curated from that site at East Smithfield – they were able to extract the actual DNA of the pathogen and prove it was Yersinia pestis (the plague bacterium) that was the causative agent for the Black Death. SHE added: “Because of having this context, you were more or less 100 per cent sure that anyone buried in that burial ground was from that phase. With that poor gentleman, who was found in one of the mass trenches, in his vertebrae he had the head of a projectile, probably an arrowhead. He survived that but unfortunately got carried off by the Black Death.”
Another skeleton from London featured in the exhibition is a post-medieval female from Crossbones in Southwark – a burial ground for paupers and prostitutes. She is thought to have only been in her late teens when she died, but her bones indicate she was in the last stages of syphilis.
“She would have had really horrible sores on her face and head, and her arms and legs,” Bekvalac said.
“She was also very short in stature and had other features like residual rickets, really indicating someone who had a pretty horrible life. She expresses that aspect of the history of London with the really awful conditions that some people lived in.”
The Scottish examples include a late medieval adolescent male from Perth’s Horse Cross Cemetery who has a visible skull fracture – possibly indicating he was a murder victim. Another Scottish skeleton is a Pictish one from South” Uist, who showed evidence of having lived a “hard life”.
Bekvalac said her teeth were also covered in tartar, which could now be analysed to find out more about her life. “It would be another avenue of research to find out more about maybe the environment she was living in, the particulates she was breathing in and possibly signatures of diseases she may have had,” she said.
Skeletons: Our Buried Bones, a collaboration between the Wellcome Collection and the Museum of London, will run from August 19, 2016 to January 8, 2017 at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow. Admission is free.